


introductions

by casdoms (moffwithhishead)



Series: season 12 [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Background Relationships, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, Gen, M/M, Season/Series 12, Tattooed Dean Winchester, background deancas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:41:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28487742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moffwithhishead/pseuds/casdoms
Summary: “I didn’t know you had tattoos.”Dean smiles a little bit to himself, amused, “You’ve seen the protection sigil.”Mary rolls her eyes and sets the first aid kit on the bed next to him, “Yeah, I’ve seen the protection sigil but I didn’t know that you had Vonnegut on your thigh.”
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Mary Winchester
Series: season 12 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/579406
Comments: 15
Kudos: 229





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello friends! this is a very old fic from the drafts that I really like, and decided to tie up in a neat little bow enough to publish. we all know dean is a nevernude guy and personally, I really like the idea that it's because he secretly has a bunch of tattoos under all those layers.
> 
> this was also written sometime when season 12 was airing, so y'know, when Mary was still feeling very weird about her kids being older than her and not knowing how to reconcile their image of her with who she is as a person. there's no Mary hate allowed here, she's wonderful and SHE did her best. 
> 
> anyways, enjoy.

The first time Mary patches Dean up after a hunt, he tries not to squirm. 

He’s sitting on the motel bed in Cas’ running shorts and nothing else because he’s got a huge gash across his chest and twenty minutes ago he had a knife sticking out of his shin. Vonnegut is staring up at him from his thigh. 

Dean’s had worse. Hell, he’s stitched up worse on his own - but this time his mom was there.

Mary comes out of the bathroom and freezes in the doorway, blinking at him.

He offers her and awkward wave and winces at the movement.

It seems to snap Mary out of it because she shakes her head a little and walks over, “Sorry, I just...” 

She makes a noise that Dean thinks is supposed to be a laugh.

“I didn’t know you had tattoos.”

Dean smiles a little bit to himself, amused, “You’ve seen the protection sigil.”

Mary rolls her eyes and sets the first aid kit on the bed next to him, “Yeah, I’ve seen the protection sigil but I didn’t know that you had Vonnegut on your thigh.”

Something in Dean’s chest clenches and melts all at once and the sudden rush of emotion knocks all the wind out of him.

He licks his lips and has to clear his throat to get any words to come out. His voice cracks, “You like Vonnegut?”

Mary laughs quietly as she pours the vodka from the trunk over the stab wound. Dean sucks in a breath and grips the mattress, biting his tongue to keep from yelping. 

“He was one of my favorite authors,” she explains, dabbing the wound with some gauze. “Slaughterhouse-Five is one of the only books I read after graduating.”

Dean hisses, not sure what to say.

Mary finishes cleaning the wound up and out and sits back against the other bed while she gets the bandage, gauze and tape together. 

“It’s... beautiful.” 

Dean looks up, surprised and a little embarrassed. It’s nothing special. It’s old and faded now and it needs to be touched up soon. Some random kid the year he dropped out of high school threw a party and his older brother had a tattoo gun. Dean gave the kid his last twenty bucks and got a pretty solid, but still shit tattoo at sixteen.

John wanted to kill him.

He tells Mary as much as he leans back on the bed, “He didn’t see it until we were on a hunt when I was eighteen. I thought he was gonna hand me over to the vampires we were hunting.”

She doesn’t say much, just lets Dean talk and tell her about how angry John was and all the awful stuff he said to their son.

Mary can see some other tattoos peeking out from under Dean’s shorts and on his lower calf. They’re all older and faded, and she feels like she’s stumbled onto something she’s not supposed to see. 

She finishes bandaging up his shin and pats the other knee gently, “Ok kiddo, you ready for me to clean up your chest?”

It takes her a moment to get off the floor, using Dean’s good knee as a brace to do so. He offers her a hand but she just waves him off, “I’m fine, you’re the one who looks like shit.”

Dean laughs, a genuine laugh, before moving to lay fully on the bed.

“Gee, thanks mom. That makes me feel better.”

Mary pokes his armpit as she sits next to him, reorganizing the first aid kit. She catches a glimpse of another tattoo near Dean’s armpit and spends half a second too long staring at it.

Dean shifts a little bit on the bed, “You’re gonna give a guy a complex.”

She shakes her head, laughing at herself, “Sorry, sorry, I just -”

Mary looks at him again, trying to broadcast acceptance with her expressions and body language. 

“I’ve been around you for a while now Dean and I had no idea you had tattoos.”

She smiles tiredly and looks away quickly, grabbing the vodka again. 

“Just seems like something a mom should know.”

The room goes quiet again while Mary works on cleaning Dean up. The _tick tick ticking_ of the old clock in the kitchen fills the silence of the motel room.

In the room next to them the TV is blasting some infomercial. There’s a car in the parking lot that has their bass turned all the way up and if Dean closes his eyes, he can almost feel the bass.

Dean opens his mouth to say something, anything, and Cas opens up the motel door with dinner in hand. 

He lets out a breath and smiles, some of the tension in the room and most of the tension in Dean’s body dissipates.

“Burgers? You’re awesome.”

* * *

Once the case is done and they make it back to the bunker, Dean finds Mary in the library. She’s flipping through one of the big tombs. 

Sometimes Dean thinks it’s funny just how much of his mom he sees in Sam. If Mary had brown hair and was freakishly tall, they’d look identical in this moment.

The air switches on and the clank of the old metal startles Mary, making her look up at Dean. “Oh, hey.”

Dean offers her a small smile, “Hey.”

He’s nervous. He hasn't’ been able to stop thinking about what Mary said in the hotel room - things that a mom should know about her son. 

It’s not a big deal, it really isn’t, but... it is. His tattoos are all small and objectively bad, but they’re little pieces of who he is. They represent all the different parts and important people of Dean’s life and they’re... personal. 

“I, um,” he starts, rubbing the back of his neck. “I have a couple tattoos.”

If Mary’s surprised, she doesn’t show it. “Oh,” she says. “Ok.”

“The Vonnegut one, you saw...” Dean clears his throat and shifts on his feet, “And uh, I have dad’s dog tags - that’s what was by my armpit.”

He raises his arm just enough so that Mary can see the edge poking out of his sleeve. She lets out a small breath and gets out of the chair like she wants to walk over to Dean.

He interrupts her before she can say or do anything else, “And, uh, I have the opening chord progression from Hey Jude on the other thigh. Cause...” Dean shrugs kinda helplessly, “Y’know.”

Mary looks like she wants to cry.

Dean coughs, clearing his throat, “And, uh, Sam’s birth and death days on this side of my ribs.” He pauses for a beat, something occurring to him, “I should probably update that one.”

That startles a laugh out of Mary, “Yeah, probably.”

He hesitates for a moment, suddenly nervous to tell her what the other two are.

They’ve made a conscious decision to never hide their relationship, but they don’t go around parading it either. And for one terrifying moment, Dean wonders if his mom knows that he’s in love with his best friend who’s also an angel. 

“Um,” Dean clears his throat, his voice going deeper all of a sudden. “And uh - this one.”

He pulls his jeans down just about an inch on his left hip to reveal a line of enochian in white ink. It’s the newest one Dean has even though it’s already a couple years old. It’s beautiful small, fragile line work with some red outlining to make certain letters pop. 

Mary steps closer, about to lean down to look at it before realizing what she’s doing.

Dean laughs nervously and shrugs, “It’s fine.”

She smiles and gets close enough to just look at it, but not touch, “It’s beautiful.”

The compliment makes Dean’s heart swell a little bit, “Thanks. It’s my favorite one.”

Mary stands up fully, meeting his eyes with a kind smile, “What’s it say?”

The frankness of the question catches Dean off guard for a moment, but it shouldn’t. It also steals the wind out of him for a moment, because, well -

“It, uh,” Dean clears his throat, tucking his shirt back in. “It says beloved.”

Before Mary can say anything, Dean clears his throat again, trying to make himself sound normal and not like he’s freaking out. “And, uh, the last one is just... a C.”

It’s another white ink tattoo and it’s fading, always fading, but Dean loves it. It’s on the webbing of his ring finger.

The library is quiet for a moment, the only sound filling the room is Cas and Sam in the kitchen. The air kicks off, making Dean jump this time with the old metal settling.

“So,” Dean rubs the back of his neck, looking anywhere but at his mom. “Yeah. I just - I... y’know.”

 _Wanted you to know_ , he wants to say. _Thought you might care_ , he thinks. 

Mary smiles and sets a hand on Dean’s forearm, giving it a gentle squeeze.

“Thank you for telling me.”

Dean looks up again, meeting her eyes and smiles nervously, “S’no big deal.”

She opens her mouth to say something else, but is interrupted.

“Dean!” Castiel pokes his head in the doorway, smiling at them, “Hello, Mary. Dinner is ready if you’re hungry.”

Mary can’t help but notice the way all the tension leaves Dean’s body again, but she doesn’t dare say anything about it.

It’s not her place. It’s no more her place than if they were two strangers at a gas station.

“Thanks, Cas,” Dean offers, a small private smile on his face. “We’ll be in there in a minute.”

Castiel nods and leaves without preamble.

Mary still doesn’t know what to make of him.

Dean clears his throat, the deeply awkward feeling settling in around them, “I, uh… I know that you’re, y’know.”

He cringes before he can stop himself, “Not entirely comfortable. But I just…” Dean harrumphs, his arms coming up to wrap around himself, “I don’t know. You’re… my mom.”

Even if he’s not her Dean, which he understands, he still wants her to know him.

And he thinks she wants that too. To know them as men, as people… to just be a friend.

Mary just squeezes his elbow gently, too scared to say something that will fuck up the moment.

Dean gets it.

“Come on.” He offers her a smile, his head inclined towards the kitchen, “Let’s get some food.”


	2. tattoos I didn’t include

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feels pretty self explanatory

tattoos that dean winchester has in canon, bc I wrote the fic but past me didn’t include all of them somehow?? 

  * Vonnegut on his thigh
  * The opening chords of hey Jude on his other thigh
  * John’s dog tags under his right armpit
  * ‘Beloved’ in enochian on his hip
  * A ‘C’ in enochian on the webbing of his finger
  * the samulet next to the dog tags
  * Sam, John and Mary’s birth and death dates under that (sams death date is crossed out once already)
  * Cherries on his ass cheek (he lost a bet)
  * A set of dice on his upper thigh, like where you can only see them without underwear on
  * The model of the gun he used the first time bobby took them ACTUALLY hunting (but he was a responsible, reasonable adult and it was the BB gun version)
  * A feather on the back of his thigh
  * A hand print on his lower back
  * Buffy’s stake but like, from the comics
  * Scooby’s dog tag on the thigh with the feather
  * ‘There is no why’ in Castiel’s handwriting going up his left calf near his knee
  * “Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road” right at the bend of his right knee
  * A tiny little enterprise that Charlie drew on the back of a Starbucks cup on the inside of his left arm
  * Enochian protection symbols on his ribs
  * Lipstick next to the cherries
  * A North Star on the top of both his feet
  * The coordinates of their house in Lawrence under his bracelets




End file.
